August’s Top 5 Concrete Suggestions For Cleaner Seas

Sea News Network’s top 5 concrete suggestions list continues with new exciting ideas on how to help our seas towards cleaner future. If you haven’t read the last months top list, you can check it out here.

In this article, we are going to present five most popular suggestions for cleaner seas that people have posted on Bubbling Pledge Application during August 2018. The Bubbling Pledge for Cleaner Seas is a web-based application, where people can share their ideas and suggestions to help our seas. Sharing ideas, commenting and liking can be done fully anonymously or by logging in.

1. Go Vegan

The most popular suggestion to help the environment was to go vegan. Eating meat is not exactly the most sustainable diet. For example, researchers at the University of Oxford have found out, that cutting meat and dairy products from your diet can reduce the individual’s carbon footprint by 73%. In addition, if everyone in the world would stop consuming these products, it would reduce the global use of farmland by 75%.

Especially eating beef has a heavy impact on the environment. According to The Guardian’s article, when comparing beef to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact per calorie is quite extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases. Beef also requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. If you don’t want or can’t go full vegan, at least consider replacing beef with chicken or other more sustainable protein.

2. Government Recycling Rewards Program

Recycling perks provided by governments is one plausible way to increase recycling and to reduce waste being dumped into oceans and seas. According to Mark Maslin, a professor of climatology at University College London, a system that awards individuals for recycling could reduce the human impact on the environment.

On the corporate level, tax incentives offered to companies that recycle is great for the business and the environment. For example, in the US certain state and federal government agencies offer incentives to companies that recycle properly and make certain institutional changes to their waste management policies.

3. Use Public Transportation

For example in the US, transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions (32,1%), according to Environmental Leader’s article. In Europe, transportation covers 27% of the total emissions. According to the Transport & Environment’s report, passenger cars alone account for 41% of the EU’s emissions, so it might be the right time to switch into public transportation like trains and buses. American Public Transportation Association states, that “a single person, commuting alone by car, who switches a 20-mile round trip commute to existing public transportation, can reduce his or her annual CO2 emissions by 4,800 pounds per year, equal to a 10% reduction in all greenhouse gases produced by a typical two-adult, two-car household.” In addition, APTA notes that households using public transportation also save money as the fuel prices are currently quite high. The savings are an average of $6,251 every year!

4. Work Remote

Working from home is probably one of the easiest concrete actions one can take for the sake of the environment. What are the sustainable benefits of telecommuting you might think? Well, first of all, you are not going to your workplace by any vehicle, which will reduce carbon emissions to some extent. Of course, this depends on are you even using any motor vehicles when commuting to work. According to Flexjob and Global Workplace Analytics, in the US telecommuting has a positive impact on the environment, since it, for example, decreases the miles traveled by vehicles and therefore produces fewer emissions. So work remote every time you can.

5. Monthly Donations For Environmental Protection Organizations

There’s a wide variety of different organizations devoted protecting the environment. Most of the people are familiar with organizations like Greenpeace and WWF, which work for the environment and animals on large scale globally. These organizations are rolling primarily on donations, so if you want them to keep up with their work, you can make donations of any sum, anytime you wish. Thumbs up for these non-profit organizations, who are working for a more sustainable future!

And that’s it for the August’s top 5 list. Thank you for the excellent suggestions regarding the health of the seas and environment. You can share your own ideas, like and comment on the others’ ideas or just explore the concrete actions people are taking on Bubble Pledge App! Stay tuned for September’s top list coming out on October 2018.

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SEA-NN (SEA News Network) news portal highlights marine sustainability, and pressing issues that need attention, above water and below the surface. It also reports on the global rollout of floating Seabin rubbish bins at Wärtsilä locations.
In order to help secure the future of our fragile planet, we need more dialogue on what kind of an impact our choices and actions have on the health of the seas and oceans of the world. We need more information on the problems we are facing but also the solutions available to us – this is what the SEA-NN portal is all about.
This site is part of Wärtsilä’s Future of the Seas initiative along with the Seabin Project partnership.